Reliquary (33 page)

Pendergast straightened up. It was all true, then. The Wrinklers were real.

He hesitated a moment, taking another hit from the mouthpiece. Then he moved down the service tube, following the tracks, keeping near the wall. When he reached the main junction, he paused for a moment, listened, then spun quickly around the corner into the Weaver stance, gun thrust forward.

Nothing.

The footprints now joined a second, well-traveled path down the center of the main line. Pendergast knelt and examined the trail. It was made of many tracks, mostly bare feet, a few shoes or boots. Some of the feet were extremely broad, almost spadelike. Others looked normal.

Many, many individuals had traveled this trail.

After another careful reconnaissance, he started forward again, passing several side tunnels as he went. Footpaths ran out of these tunnels, converging with the main path. It was almost, Pendergast thought, like the web of tracks one found when hunting in Botswana or Namibia: animals, converging on a watering hole--or a lair.

A large structure loomed ahead. If Al Diamond was correct, this was the remains of the Crystal Pavilion. As Pendergast moved closer, he could make out a long railway platform, its sides layered with the muck of innumerable floods. Carefully, he followed the herd path up onto the platform and looked around, making sure to keep his back against the nearest wall.

The VisnyTek goggles showed, in pitiless greens, a scene of fantastic decay. Gaslight fixtures, once beautiful, now empty and skeletal, hung from the cracked tile mosaics that adorned the walls, and a mosaic ceiling displaying the twelve figures of the zodiac covered the ceiling.

At the rear of the platform, the herd path converged beneath a low archway. Pendergast moved forward, then stopped abruptly. From the other side of the archway came a hot breeze, carrying an unmistakable smell. Reaching into his pack, he felt for the military-issue argon flash lamp, found it, and drew it out. The flash was powerful enough to blind a person temporarily, even in the bright midday sun; the drawback was that it took seven seconds to recharge and the charge pack held enough juice for only a dozen flashes. Taking another whiff of oxygen, he thrust the flash forward with one hand, aimed his gun into the blackness with the other, and stepped beneath the archway.

The night-vision goggles bloomed into static as they tried to resolve the vast space that lay beyond. As best Pendergast could tell, he was in a large, circular room. Far above his head, the remains of an enormous crystal chandelier, filthy and askew, dangled from the groined ceiling. Bits of material that looked like seaweed hung from its still-graceful curves. The ceiling was a great dome, tiled in mirrors that were now shattered and webbed, hovering above him like a ruined, glittering sky. Although he could not make out the center of the large space, Pendergast saw a series of stone steps, placed at irregular intervals, leading ahead into the darkness. The muddy footprints followed these steps. In the center was some kind of structure: an information kiosk, perhaps, or ancient refreshment area.

The walls of the room curved away from him into the distance, pillared in Doric columns of crumbling plaster. Between the nearest columns was an enormous tiled mural: trees, a quiet lake with a beaver dam and beaver, mountains, and an approaching thunderstorm were all depicted in ruined complexity. The decayed condition of the mural and its shattered tiles would have reminded Pendergast of Pompeii, were it not for the furious sea of dried mud and filth that had swept up along its lower edges. Broad streaks of ordure, like a giant’s fingerpainting, ran crazily up the walls. Along the crown of the mural, Pendergast could make out the name
ASTOR
in complex tilework. He smiled; Astor had originally made his fortune in beaver pelts. This had indeed been a private sanctuary for a few very rich families.

The next bay contained another great mural, this one depicting a steam locomotive crossing a river gorge, pulling a line of hopper and tank cars and framed by snow-capped peaks. The name
VANDERBILT
was tiled above it--a man who made his fortune in railroads. In front of the mural lay an ancient ottoman, its arms askew and its back broken, mildewed stuffing pouring from the rent pillows. Farther along, a niche marked
ROCKEFELLER
depicted an oil refinery in a bucolic setting, surrounded by farms, the distillation columns tinged by the sunset.

Pendergast took a step into the large space. He watched the rows of columns recede into darkness, the grand names of the Gilded Age glowing in his goggles: Vanderbilt, Morgan, Jesup, others too faint to make out. He moved slowly, watching for any movement. At the far side of the room, a corridor marked
TO HOTEL
led to two ornate elevators, their brass doors wide open and stained with verdigris, the cars inside in complete devastation, cables draped along the floor like iron snakes. Inset into a nearby wall between two shattered mirrors was a mahogany schedule board, warped and rotten with worm holes. Though the bottom of the board had fallen away, he could make out the lettering across the top:

WEEKENDS IN SEASON

Dest.                           Time

Pocantico Hills             10:14 A

Cold Spring                 10:42

Hyde Park                   11:3

Beside the timetable was a small waiting area of disintegrating chairs and sofas. Amidst them, Pendergast saw what had once been a Bösendorfer concert grand. The floods had rotted and then stripped most of the wood away, leaving a massive metal frame, keyboard, and wild nest of broken strings: a musical skeleton, now silent.

Pendergast turned toward the center of the room and listened. The silence was broken only by the distant sound of dripping water; he glanced around and saw a stream of shivering drops falling from the ceiling. He began moving forward, scanning in the direction of the archway and platform for a flash of white in the goggles that would indicate something warmer than the surrounding environment. Nothing.

The goatish smell became stronger.

As the shape in the center began resolving itself in the green haze of his goggles, Pendergast realized it was too low and squat to be a kiosk. Now he could see that it was a crudely made structure: a hut of smooth white stones with only a partial roof, apparently unfinished, surrounded by low platforms and pedestals. Moving still closer, he could see that what he had thought were stones were actually skulls.

Pendergast stopped and took several breaths of the cleansing oxygen. The entire hut had been constructed of human skulls, anterior sides facing outward. Ragged holes yawned through their backs, glowing eerily green in his goggles. He counted the skulls from floor to roof, then did a rough estimation of the diameter; a quick calculation told him that the circular wall of the hut was formed of roughly four hundred and fifty skulls. Hair and scalp fragments showed that most, if not all, of the skulls were fresh.

Pendergast circled to the front of the hut, then waited outside the entrance for several minutes, motionless. The tracks ended here--thousands of them--in a mad jumble of prints around the opening. Above it, he could see three ideographs, painted in some dark liquid:

There was no sound, no movement. Taking a deep breath, he crouched, then spun toward the inside.

The hut was deserted. Ceremonial clay goblets, at least a hundred or more, had been placed on the floor along the inside wall. Outside the entrance stood a simple stone offering table, perhaps four feet high and two in diameter. It was surrounded with a fence made out of what appeared to be human long-bones, lashed with rawhide. Some odd-looking metal parts had been arranged on the table and covered with rotting flowers, as if part of a shrine. Pendergast picked up one of the parts and examined it in surprise. It was a flat piece of metal with a worn rubber handle. The other, equally mundane items provided no further clues. He slipped a few of the smallest into his pocket.

Suddenly, a flash of white registered in his goggles. Quickly, he dropped to a kneeling position behind the table. All seemed quiet, and he wondered if he had been mistaken. Occasionally the goggles could be fooled by thermal layers in the air.

But there it was again: a shape, human--or nearly--loping through the archway from the platform beyond, a white blob leaving an infrared track on his field of view. It appeared to be clutching something to its chest as it ran toward him.

In the thick dark, Pendergast silently raised his gun in one hand, his flash apparatus in the other, and waited.

= 40 =

Margo sat back in the flimsy institutional chair, massaging her temples lightly with her fingertips. After Frock’s departure, the meeting had quickly degenerated into disagreement. Horlocker left the room for several minutes to speak privately with the mayor. He returned with a city engineer named Hausmann. Now, Jack Masters, head of NYPD’s Tactical Response Unit, was also on the phone. But so far they had made little progress toward any course of action.

“Look,” came the voice of Masters, tinny and distorted, through the speakerphone. “It’s taken my people almost half an hour just to verify the existence of these Astor Tunnels. How can we insert a team?”

“Send several teams, then,” Horlocker snapped. “Try different entrance points. Use a wave approach, so we know at least one team will make penetration.”

“Sir, you can’t even tell me the number or condition of the, well, whatever you call them. And the terrain is unfamiliar. The tunnel system beneath Manhattan is so complex, my men would be compromised. There are too many unknowns, too many ambush points.”

“There’s always the Bottleneck,” said Hausmann, the City Engineer, chewing fretfully on the end of his pen.

“The what?” Horlocker replied.

“The Bottleneck,” said the engineer. “All the piping in that quadrant has to go through a single large blast hole, maybe three hundred feet down. The Astor Tunnels are below that somewhere.”

“There you go,” Horlocker said into the speakerphone. “We could seal it off and proceed from there. Right?”

There was a pause. “I suppose so, sir.”

“So we could trap them.”

“Maybe.” Masters sounded dubious even through the speakerphone. “But what then? We couldn’t lay siege. And we couldn’t very well go in and root them out. It would be a stalemate. We need more time to grid the route.”

Margo glanced at D’Agosta, looking on disgustedly. It was what he’d been recommending from the beginning.

Horlocker pounded on the table. “Goddammit, we don’t
have
time! I’ve got the governor and the mayor breathing down my neck. They’ve authorized me to take any action necessary to stop these killings. And I plan to do just that.”

Now that Horlocker had made up his mind, his determination, his impatience, was remarkable. Margo wondered just what it was the mayor had said in their telephone conversation that had so put the fear of God into the Police Chief.

Hausmann, the engineer, removed his pen from his mouth long enough to speak. “How can we be sure these creatures live in the Astor Tunnels, anyway? I mean, underground Manhattan’s a large place.”

Horlocker turned toward Margo. She cleared her throat, aware of being put on the spot.

“From what I understand,” she said, “there are a lot of underground homeless throughout the tunnels. If there were a concentration of these creatures elsewhere, the homeless would know about it. Like we said earlier, there’s no reason to doubt the word of this Mephisto. Besides, if the creatures have any of the characteristics of the Mbwun beast, they’ll shun light. The deeper their nest, the better. Of course,” she added quickly, “Pendergast’s report will--”

“Thank you,” Horlocker said, stepping hard on her final words. “Okay, Masters? You’ve got the brief.”

The door swung open suddenly, the squeaking of rubber wheels announcing Frock’s return. Margo looked up slowly, almost afraid to see the expression on the old scientist’s face.

“I think I owe everyone here an apology,” he said simply, wheeling up to the table. “As I went through the Museum’s halls just now, I did my best to look at things objectively. And on reflection, I’m afraid I may well have been wrong. It’s difficult to admit it, even to myself. But I suppose the theory advanced by Margo best fits the facts.” He turned toward Margo. “Please forgive me, my dear. I’m a tiresome old man, overly fond of his pet theories. Especially when it comes to evolution.” He smiled wanly.

“How noble,” Horlocker said. “But leave the soul-searching for later.”

“We need better maps,” the voice of Masters continued, “and more information about the hostiles’ habits.”

“Damn it!” Horlocker cried. “Aren’t you hearing me? We don’t have time for a geological survey here! Waxie, what’s your take on this?”

There was a silence.

Frock eyed Waxie, who was staring out the window as if hoping to see the much-needed answer spray painted across Central Park’s Great Lawn. The Captain frowned, but no words came.